Why Detroit has Auto Show but Grand Rapids doesn't have NeoCon, the office furniture show

Grand Rapids PressThe never-built Furniture Capitol Building was designed as a way of trying to keep Grand Rapids as the national hub for the industry. The Great Depression and plans for Chicago's Merchandise Mart helped kill the project, which would have been located near the present Amway Grand Plaza Hotel tower.

GRAND RAPIDS — For months, West Michigan office-furniture companies and suppliers have been getting ready for NeoCon, the industry trade show that opens Monday and attracts buyers from around the world.

The three-day showcase in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart draws more than 40,000 designers, facility managers and journalists.

For three decades, Jim Stelter has been making the annual pilgrimage from Grand Rapids to Chicago, first as a Steelcase Inc. executive and now with his furniture company, Vanerum-Stelter, which this year opened a permanent showroom in Merchandise Mart.

NeoCon is so important that he is practically shutting down his company’s Grand Rapids office Wednesday so the staff can attend. It’s a day set aside for competitors to check out one another’s products.

“It’s like coming to a seminar,” Stelter said.

There was a time when Grand Rapids didn’t go to Chicago. Buyers came to Grand Rapids, Christian Carron said.

Carron is the author of “Grand Rapids Furniture: The Story of America’s Furniture History” and director of education, interpretation and research at the Grand Rapids Public Museum, which has a permanent exhibit about the days when Grand Rapids reigned as Furniture City USA.

In its heyday during the early 20th century, the Grand Rapids furniture market occupied 1.5 million square feet in the city, filling eight downtown buildings and showcasing the goods of more than 600 manufacturers.

“It definitely had a big impact,” Carron said.

Theatre, from vaudeville to the opera, scheduled performances around the furniture market which had held national shows during three weeks in January and four weeks in June.

Besides the economic impact, the furniture market put the city on the map and shaped Grand Rapids’ identity.

With the competition in other markets squarely in mind, the owner of several downtown Grand Rapids showrooms proposed the mammoth 34-story Furniture Capitol building in the late 1920s that he thought could help keep the city at the forefront of the industry.

But, as the Great Depression set in, the concept of what today still would be the city’s tallest building was scrapped.

The decline of Grand Rapids’ furniture market began in 1931 when Marshall Field & Co. opened the 4 million square foot Merchandise Mart in downtown Chicago.

In the 1940s, Joe Kennedy acquired the mammoth showroom mecca, which remained property of the famous political family for 50 years until it was bought by Vornado Realty Trust in 1998.

It took decades until Grand Rapids’ annual show was canceled in 1965. By then, the market had become exclusively residential and high-end, as manufacturing of mid-range furniture migrated South for cheaper labor.

”We are still a region that makes a lot of furniture, but our identity isn’t so linked to this one industry,” Carron said.

Still, heavyweights Steelcase, Herman Miller and Haworth continue to make West Michigan the capital of the office-furniture industry.

So why doesn’t Grand Rapids host NeoCon? The Auto Show has always been in the backyard of the industry’s Big Three: Chrysler, Ford and GM. While it makes sense for Detroit to host the nation’s biggest auto show, Grand Rapids isn’t big enough for the country’s biggest trade show, says Rob Kirkbride, associate editor for the contract-furniture industry trade publication Monday Morning Quarterback.

“Imagine trying to get 50,000 people in and out of the Grand Rapids airport, let alone find a room,” Kirkbride said. “It would be impossible.”

Kirkbride wrote a column about moving the furniture show back to Grand Rapids. He did not hear from people who liked the idea.

“All the people in industry said, ‘Don’t say that because it (NeoCon) is the only good meal we get all year,’” he said.

He thinks Grand Rapids could be a good fit for a different kind of show.

“What would make perfect sense to me would be to have a supplier show in Grand Rapids,” Kirkbride said. “That would be a perfect size for the city and it would attract a lot of manufacturers.”